What if
by nico229
Summary: Saying goodbye to a friend is always hard. But if said friend is also the one you fell for? How should one cope with it? One-shot


Dear Caleb,

It's been years since we've been in each other's lives, but I still smile at the memory of how you and I met, the simple mistake of you accidentally putting money towards more minutes on my prepaid phone instead of yours. I remember calling you and trying to figure out a way of transferring said minutes to your phone where they were supposed to go to in the first place, for I had no use for them.

Your voice over the phone sounded so calm and funny it just made me curious to know whom I was really talking to. And to think our phone numbers were different only by a number. I remember we kept in touch. I lived in LA and you were living in NY. We always made plans of going out to visit each other during college.

Those plans never came true for some reason or another. I started working while I was in college while you started recording an album. You got famous for it and I was lucky enough to make my way to the top as the fashion designer for several television productions.

Eventually I was roped into taking the lead as the main designer for one TV show in particular and that is when our worlds finally collided. You had been cast as the main lead and hadn't told me anything about it. You wanted it to be a surprise and what a surprise it had been to finally see you standing in front of me after spending years of talking on the telephone and internet.

We had shared pictures of our homes and our families and friends were aware of us talking over the phone. And then you were finally standing in front of me with that impossible grin I had come to know only from pictures, plastered on your face.

I was silent for a few minutes and then we fell into our rhythm. You easily became a huge part of my life, becoming my closest friend and the person who would always pull me back and stop me from doing stupid things.

In exchange, I would give you such a hard time, mixing clothes you would never have worn for your character. And I could tell from the way you walked into my office after fittings that your skin was crawling because the way your character acted and dressed was nothing like you in real life.

But what I came to love most were the nights when we were both free and would go out for drinks. We could stay up talking for hours and never get bored with each other's company. I remember several times when one of us was down and we talked the entire night on the phone despite the fact that one of us would have to go to work in the morning.

When the first season wrapped and I went on my first ever solo vacation, you asked me to write to you about the places I visited and the people I met. And I did. I created a travel journal on my laptop, writing about each experience I had on that trip.

But as the time passed and our schedules got busy we lost touch. I would rarely get a phone call or message from you. You would hardly pick up my phone calls unless they were work related. Your silence really hurt me and then I finally managed to corner you into telling me what's wrong. What had I done to make you act this way?

"I have started seeing someone and she doesn't approve of how close our friendship is so please Hanna, do not contact me anymore." Your answer cut me into million pieces. What is that saying? Always tell someone how important they are to you because they could be gone from your life in a split second?

I guess that it was true. I had never bothered myself with telling you how much you meant to me or how much I cared about you, of how much I loved you. And now you're gone from my life and there's a void inside of me.

And that void became larger every time we would pass each other in the hallways at work and every time I saw you smile while you were talking with your girlfriend on the phone. The pain increased with every minute I spent in your company knowing that I'd fallen for my best friend and that he loves another. It killed me to know that you were walking away from me with each day that went by, with each day where she was by your side.

But as the time goes by the pain hurts less with every day. As the months and years passed by we went from best of friends to co-workers and then to nothing more than strangers. And then it's here, the day when I see you're engaged to the same person that asked you to remove me from your life. And the void returns once more, the ghost of the pain surrounds me again.

But for the first time in a long time I don't succumb to it anymore. I wish you the best, Caleb. I want to see you happy and if she's making you happy then so be it. I hope that she continues to bring you millions of rays of light in your life.

I hope you never wake up alone to a cold bed or a silent house and that you always continue to laugh and smile and move on with your life. I hope that you never look back at me and wonder what if…

~Hanna


End file.
